At six feet, I had surpassed her in height, but standing there on the day of my high school graduation, it seemed that mirror revealed much more than our discrepancy in height. My mother had aged. We had celebrated her forty-third birthday that year, and now, standing so close to her, I could see the depth of the crow’s-feet at the corners of her eyes, what she called her “worry lines,” and how her once-unblemished skin now displayed the inevitable markings that only time delivers.
